


not playing by the rules we played the game of loss

by kimaracretak



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/F, Family, Fix-It, Gen, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, and what it means when the people you love hate how you fight for them, our badbrains kids not yours, redemption and atonement and the thin thin line connecting them, that's not how u redemption arc show i'll fight u i'll fight the world, uneven temporalities, what wonderful characters what a despicable canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-02
Updated: 2016-03-08
Packaged: 2018-05-23 17:23:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6124339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kimaracretak/pseuds/kimaracretak
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(pull me out of the dark / into your stars / into your sky): When Alex and Astra fake Astra's death, it doesn't go as well as either of them had hoped, and the recovery isn't nearly as easy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> title quote from kamelot, "song for jolee"; summary quote from guilt machine, "green and cream"

Alex has seen a lot of terrible things during her time with the DEO. Most of them involve walking into scenes of total disaster and seeing her sister -- costume singed or face bruised, smeared with dust or with bits of concrete stuck in her hair but always _always_ her little sister -- standing in the middle of the worst of it. She's killed people, seen friends die and is never ever going to get the image of Kara falling in battle for the first time out of her head.

But this ... standing on the rooftop watching Kara sob over her aunt's body like the world is ending ( _it is_ , she recognises numbly in a part of her that she doesn't want to, _can't_ look at too closely right now, _her world's ending for the second time today because I keep tearing it away from her_ ), this might just be the worst.

Alex steps back far enough to give them privacy but she doesn't look away, and she doesn't need to hear the words to understand the pain in Kara's tears falling down to soak Astra's uniform, Astra's hands trembling against Kara's cheeks. She sways unsteadily on her feet, feels J'onn's presence beside her just as heavy as the sword strapped across her back and far more confusing.

She rips her gaze away just in time to see tiny blue lights speeding through the sky towards them. Blue lights that can't possibly belong to a DEO chopper. "Kara," she says, voice nearly lost in the bite of the wind and the drone of Non's approaching army. "Kara, come on, we have to go."

Kara stands up, Astra's limp form cradled in her arms, and Alex is struck by how gently she holds her now, how far they've come from the day Kara dragged her aunt into the DEO and left her on the concrete without a backward glance. They haven't come nearly far enough. "She's still breathing," Kara says, loud enough for Alex to hear. "I'm not leaving her to die without someone she loves."

And she doesn't mean it to hurt, and Alex hadn't thought anything about this night could hurt more, except now she feels like she's the one who's been stabbed.

"Super -- Kara, _wait_." J'onn takes half a step forward, but Kara's gone before he's gotten even half a word out, so fast that Alex hadn't even seen her bend her knees in preparation to take off.

"Sir," Alex calls. She has so many things she wants to ask, to explain, things like _it wasn't supposed to be like this_ and _we had a plan_ and _why, why couldn't you have given me just thirty more seconds_ and _how long do you think I can lie to Kara about this_ , so many things clamouring for attention that she can't give them as the Kryptonians draw closer. "Sir, you need to trust her, and we need to get out of here, _now_." She means Kara, or maybe even Astra, but between the confusion and the adrenaline all she can feel is exhaustion.

When he turns to face her, he looks the closest thing she's ever seen him be to frightened. "Alex..."

But she shakes her head, ignores his outstretched hand as they run for the chopper.

 

*

 

They spend the flight back in silence, even though every look J'onn gives her says _we need to talk_ louder than any words could. It's almost acceptable, here, with the blades whirling above them and the static chatter over the radio doing an admirable job of keeping them from drowning in the spaces where they aren't saying things like _Kara_ and _Astra_ and _why_.

Alex doesn't know what's waiting for them back at the DEO. Doesn't know what she _wants_ to be waiting for them in the lonely sand-and-steel bunker, and that's maybe even worse.

If she had had more time, if she had gone for her knife instead of the sword or thought to make sure Astra still had her anti-kryptonite badge on, if she had just _stuck with the plan, goddamnit,_ then all four of them could be on this chopper together. Astra would be weakened and handcuffed but whole, with the possibility of another new life ahead of her; Alex would be -- would be _better_ , she wants to think, anything has to be better than this sick hollow emptiness that's rapidly being filled with lies she doesn't want to try to justify telling.

But she hadn't had time, hadn't done any of that. Astra's death was supposed to be faked, supposed to give her -- to give both of them -- time to pause, to think, to re-evaluate the war and the strange curiosities that have been swirling around them since Astra first knelt down next to her on an abandoned warehouse floor. To let Astra recover herself and her relationship with Kara, to let Alex figure out why her first thought upon seeing Astra had faded from  _enemy_ to _start_.

Until Astra had wavered a little too much on the rooftop, and Alex had fallen back on instinct, and now Astra was going to die and take all those possibilities, all those beginnings with her. Was going to have them taken away from her, because of Alex.

Except ... except Astra doesn't die. She hangs on for hours after Kara's said what she was sure were her final goodbyes, long after J'onn has taken responsibility for Astra's situation and walked away. She lies still and cold, green-tinged under the harsh industrial lights of the medical bay and she hangs on, every rasping breath a struggle that reminds Alex that this, too, is nothing more than another of her failures.

She couldn't protect Kara. She couldn't kill Astra. She couldn't save Astra for real. Couldn't do anything then but watch and try, can't do anything now but drink too much, keep a silent vigil by Astra's bed with a bottle of whiskey and a much louder one on Kara's couch with beer and _Homeland_ and anything that might distract her sister, anything to convince her that she made the right choice in coming back.

(Alex can't shake the memory of seeing the Black Mercy's version of Kara's family on Krypton, a family that never sent her away and never died. Can't stop thinking about how she nearly took the last remnant of that family from her just hours later. Can't move herself away from the certainty that bringing Kara back was selfish, and maybe not the right choice at all. What right does she have to protect Kara from her own dreams?)


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Alex has two very necessary conversations

The thing is, tactically, everything should have been fine.

The thing is, practically, the same collision of plans and desires and people can be forced over and over again and something different can win every time.

Kara has already cleared a path to the medical bay by the time Alex and J'onn and the rest of the agents return, already gotten Astra settled in a sunbed. Alex looks at the doctors doing their best to be inconspicuous against the walls and wonders how Kara convinced them to let her tend to Astra. Then she looks at her sister, pacing the hallway still in full Supergirl gear, eyes raw and red from a combination of heat vision and tears and angrier than Alex has ever seen her, and supposes she should just be grateful that all the doctors are still in one piece.

"Kara," Alex starts, but anything else is lost as Kara rockets into her arms at not-quite superspeed, enveloping her in hair and cape and arms that tighten close enough to make her bones _creak_.

Alex groans even as she hugs Kara back, and Kara mumbles "sorry" immediately, loosening her hold just enough that Alex can breathe again and burying her face in the crook of her neck.

"It's okay," Alex says reflexively, like she's done for twelve years every time Kara forgot about her powers and broke a chair or burned a hole in a wall. But it's not okay, because this time Kara's tears are Alex's fault, and Kara is never going to know that. Because the only other person Kara could hug like she wants, _needs_ to in this moment might never wake up because of Alex.

" _Not_ okay," Kara wails quietly against her shoulder, and then something else that's lost in a fresh wave of tears.

Alex opens her mouth, shuts it again, settles for rubbing comforting circles across Kara's back. _Just hold on_ , she thinks numbly. _Kara, Astra, both of you, please, just keep holding on._ She presses her cheek to Kara's, realises that somewhere along the line she's started crying too. _I'm here I'm here I'm here._ She wills all the truths she wants to say but can't for fear of the truth she shouldn't say coming out as well into their hug and slowly, slowly, her sister's breathing starts to even out.

It feels like a decade has passed by the time Kara lets her go and steps back just enough to look at Alex. Alex opens her eyes in time to see J'onn, who had been hovering at the end of the corridor, start a deliberate retreat back towards his office. She's not sure if she hates him for leaving her alone with Kara and her own secrets or if she should just be glad she's not going to have to witness another fight between a Kryptonian and a Martian tonight.

"Is Astra..." She tilts her head toward the medbay windows. She has a horrible feeling she knows the answer already.

"She's not healing," Kara whispers brokenly. "Astra, she's ... nothing's happening. Shouldn't she be getting better by now?"

And there it is, the endless fields of unknowns that she and Astra had only started to map in rushed whispers that had never carried the sort of hate they by rights ought to have. _What happens to Kryptonian cells after prolonged exposure to anti-Kryptonite shielding? Who do we tell about this? How much do you have to hurt to make this convincing? What if, what if, what if...?_

She shrugs helplessly. "I don't know."

It's the only answer she can give. But as her sister sways against the wall, holding on so tightly for support that Alex can _see_ the holes forming in the metal under her fingertips, it's the answer she least wants to give.

*

"You're really okay with letting Astra stay here?" Alex asks J'onn hours later, after she's managed to bully a couple junior agents into finding the only comfortable chair in the complex and gotten Kara settled with a blanket by her aunt's bedside. It's late -- or maybe hideously early, she hasn't been able to bring herself to check her watch, doesn't know how to look at her hands without feeling the weight of the kryptonite sword in them -- and there's a pleading note in her voice that she's too tired to erase.

J'onn paces his office, still restless. He'd rather be roaming the halls, Alex knows, checking in with his agents and hovering over screens, but that carries too much of a chance of running into Kara. "Not really," he sighs, rubbing the back of his neck. "But it's better she's here than with Non and her troops. At least this way we can keep an eye on her. Find out what she knows about Myriad, if she ever wakes up."

"She _will,"_ Alex says, too fast, and J'onn stops pacing, leans across his desk and gives her one of those looks that always makes her unsure exactly how much he's reigning in his Martian telepathy. _Shit._

J'onn raises an eyebrow. "Something you want to tell me, Agent Danvers?" It's his boss voice, miles away from his almost-a-family voice, and oh _god_ this night is a disaster that's never going to end, everyone fracturing and spiraling further and further away from her.

_He's doing this for you,_ she reminds herself firmly. _For you and Kara, to protect what you have. What you wouldn't have if she knew what you did to Astra._ She meets his eyes, willing him to stay with her, listen to her, _trust her_ just a little longer. "Want to tell you? No." That, at least, is true. "Should I tell you? I ... I don't know."

She's going to have to, at some point, if Astra wakes up ( _she will, she will_ ), going to have to tell some version of the past few weeks that renders their relationship intelligible to J'onn and Kara. It might even be an easier story to tell than the one she and Astra are going to have to piece together for themselves.

J'onn just looks at her, and Alex realises she's half-expecting the order to tell him anyway. But it doesn't come. J'onn sinks into his chair, presses his hands against his forehead, and he looks older than Alex has seen him since he talked about the devastation of his planet. So many deaths that he's taken responsibility for, and now he's shouldering Astra as well, _for her._

The guilt in her stomach grows, knots itself ever tighter.

When J'onn finally speaks, all he says is, "You're not going to listen to me if I tell you to go home and get some sleep, are you?"

"No sir." He may have softened slightly, but she respects the distance that's established itself between them anyway. Numbs herself to it. _Get used to it. You still have Kara, for now._

"I didn't think so." Half a smile tugs at the corner of his mouth anyway, and Alex feels warm for the first time since she stepped out onto the rooftop. "Go be with your sister. And try to get rest of some sort."

"Yeah, I will," she says, and if she's probably going to find that rest at the bottom of a bottle, at least it's not really a lie.

She's almost at the door when he adds, "And -- I know I'm the last person Kara wants to see right now, but I ... I need to tell her what happened at CatCo today."

Alex freezes. _What happened?_ Icy dread joins the guilt in the pit of her stomach, winds cold fingers up to her heart. CatCo had been ... strange for Kara since the Adam thing, from what little Alex had been able to gather in between dealing with Bizarro and Lord, but it was still Kara's safe place. _Had_ to still be Kara's safe place, now that Alex had ripped her away from the Black Mercy and ensured that Astra might never wake up.

"Sir?" She's not sure what her question is. She's not sure she wants to hear the answer.

"Just ... tell her to see me before she goes back to work."

Alex runs a hand through her hair, mutters a vague assent as she leaves. Just one more thing that she, that they all have failed to protect Kara from.

Looking back at him through the glass office walls, she takes a bleak sort of comfort in the fact that everyone else is finding it just as hard to count today as a victory as she is.


End file.
